Mrs. Jaya Mehta, nee Jaya Patel, was born in Vadodara, now known as Baroda, India on May 15th, 1933. Because her father was a businessman, her family traveled quite a bit with him between places likes Baroda, Bombay, and even East Africa, where Mrs. Mehta spent a few years of her childhood. Mainly, however, her family lived in Bombay. Hers was a unique family: they had seven siblings from three different mothers. Her father’s first wife had had four children before passing away in childbirth; then her father remarried, but his second wife passed away during the birth of their first child. Mrs. Mehta’s mother had two children and remained the mother for the youngest three-four children. Mrs. Mehta’s elder half sisters were already married by this time, and one had moved away from their family in Bombay to live in Baroda with her husband. Mrs. Mehta’s siblings got along so well with each other—despite their differences in mothers—that they became a role model family for her Gujarati community in Bombay.Mrs. Mehta cannot speak of her childhood without speaking fondly of her father, Mr. Somabhai Patel. When asked how it was that her various siblings got along so well with each other, without hesitating Mrs. Patel credits her father, in her words the man who helped shaped who she is today. He was a very commensensical and practical man. Every evening, he made sure the whole family had dinner together, and every weekend, he also made sure they went to a drive together either to the beach, which was not so crowded in those days, or to their farmlands, 11,000 acres of primarily cotton. Mr. Patel stressed the importance of an education to both his sons and his daughters, supporting two of his daughters in becoming practicing doctors. The environment in the Patel house was, also quite uniquely, one of morals but not religion, something unheard of in those days. However, because Mr. Patel was well-respected within their community, no one bothered him in hs ways, even when most of his children had small civil ceremonies rather than grand religious weddings. Mr. Patel also instilled a sense of independence and health in his children, telling them that even if they wanted a cup of water, they should fetch it themselves, and they shouldn’t eat street food, but fruits with thick skins only when purchasing food on the street.Mrs. Mehta herself was not so fond of studying and reading, so one summer, she took a vacation with her sister and Mr. and Mrs. Sevenoaks to Europe by sea to various countries like the United Kingdom and Austria, among others. She speaks of how, even at 19, she would get into amusement parks as a child because of her thin figure—however, she also speaks of how she would get carded when they went to an over-18-only place and would have to carry her passport accordingly. Mrs. Mehta’s hair was a incredibly long when she was young and even into her middle age—it would near reach the ground! She would turn heads wherever she went and catch people’s attention. One time on her European trip, when they were trying to cross the border, the two guards were arguing amongst each other before they approached her in the vehicle. “We can’t decide,” they said to her and her sister, “if you two are twins!” They couldn’t believe it! Mrs. Mehta’s sister’s hair also cascaded down at least to her knees. The Sevenoaks were kind to the girls, making sure to explain local customs to them, like kissing on the hands as a form of greeting, so that they wouldn’t be alarmed as they passed through different countries, like Austria.During the time of the Partition, Mrs. Mehta says that she herself was not very involved. Her father had a strict rule—education first, everything else after. Thus some of the younger Patel siblings, the students in her family, were even sent away from Bombay to Baroda by her father during that tumultous time to continue studing. Mrs. Mehta recalls though that her elder sisters, who were married and had already completed their studies, were somewhat involved as citizens and activists in the Partition. Following the news and advice of the Indian National Congress, they bought a spinning wheel to spin their yarn and threads to make their own clothing, like Gandhiji was encouraging people to do. They would make themselves simple clothes and wear them until they were tattered all in an effort to make sure they didn’t purchase the British’s mechanically produced cloth. Her sisters would also attend some of the protests and rallies. A few of those, Mrs. Mehta remembers, were right next to their home. The Britsh soldiers and militia would come and beat the legs of those who were injured quite badly. She remembers her father would open their home up to these injured rally and protest attendees and that her family would tend to them and care for them.Bombay had always been a cosmopolitan city and would always be one, according to Mrs. Mehta, so she didn’t feel that it changed very much after the Partition. The Sindhi population in the city increased, and with them, they brought their love for education and built universities around the city. They were also very good embroidery- men and women, and hence with the influx of their populations, Bombay’s embroidered and designed clothing and styles boomed. All in all, Mrs. Mehta says, the changes were small, but whoever migrated to the big city brought with them all the positives and good things about their culture and shared them with the city and its inhabitants.Bombay is where Mrs. Mehta has spent the majority of her life. As a child, she enjoyed attending the Kite Flying Festival on the 14th of January where the children would fly kites and eat sweets, like peanut and sesame brittle. She also loved celebrating Garba with her Gujarati community in Bombay. During Garba, Mrs. Mehta would be able to sing, a passion which naturally ignited in her from the tender age of four, and dance dandian, a two-stick spinning dance style; she also loved the little gifts of metal utensils they would receive at the event. Bombay was where Mrs. Mehta dated her husband for six years; it’s where she eventually married her husband; it’s where she sang on the radio and modeled saris; it’s where she had a her daughter; it’s where she decided to learn to sing formally by moving to Baroda to attending a five-year singing program; and it’s where she finally decided, after her husband passed, that she would give up her life in India to move to America to be with her daughter in 2003.However, Mrs. Mehta has not slowed down one bit since her move to the States. Because of the sense of independence her father instilled in her, she’s learned to adapt, begin new projects, and never be bored. These days, Mrs. Mehta is still quite active: she drives herself, cooks vegetarian meals for her family four days a week, gives the seniors at the India Community Center singing lessons, has a weekly bridge troupe, puts on fundraising Bollywood dance numbers in which she’s often center stage, and is working to collect various memories and stories in to compile her family’s history. Of course, she also manages to share her love with her daugher and two grandchildren.

Mrs. Khalida Ghousia Akhtar was born on November 7th, 1937 in Jammu, Kashmir. Mrs. Akhtar’s family can trace their family history at least a hundred years back to her grandparents. Mrs. Akhtar’s family is of Rajput descent: her grandfather and his brothers were warriors. Mrs. Akhtar’s Rajput ancestors, descendants of royalty and known for their bravery, had helped the British beat the local people, and in return, they had been given huge lands that they had willed to their descendants. They were the type of people who valued history and bravery more than wealth. Mrs. Akhtar describes an indepdent in which her ancestors, four brothers, had been told to race their horses as far as they could from dawn to dusk, and all the lands that they traversed would be their property. They weren’t very religious people and didn’t want their father’s lands. When someone came to have them sign papers to give away their lands to her, they asked her servant where the rifle on his shoulder came from. He said he found it on the land, and they recognized it as belonging to their ancestors—this rifle is still in Mrs. Akhtar’s family’s ownershipd. They signed away this enormous property simple to retrieve this ancestral rifle. Moreover, Mrs. Akhtar’s grandmother was from Tashkent, Russia from before WWI. During the first World War, they moved to the state of Kashmir. Mrs. Akhtar’s grandfather was from Jalinder, Punjab, but he was posted in Jammu in the legal department. At the time, Kashmir had two capitals: Jammu, which was the primary capital, and Srinagar, which was the summer capital. Kashmir was a Muslim majority state with a Hindu king, Maharaja Hari Singh. This was a king that everyone respected, Mrs. Akhtar recalls. They felt honored to have him as a king because he seemed to truly care for his people, even if it put himself at risk. Mrs. Akhtar shares that two of her grandparents died of the black plague, which was common and quickly spreading I the area from lack of hygiene and disease carrying vermin. Maharaja Hari Singh would go through the back alleyways and small streets himself, on foot and on horse with his pant legs rolled up to his knees, to see how people were doing and if the hygiene of his kingdom was being properly handled. His advisors would repeatedly caution him not to go, lest he get the plague himself, but he was concerned more about his people than himself. He personally made sure that the streets were sprinkled with a layer of limestone to counteract the plague. Other than standing with his people during difficult times, he also joined peoples of all faiths during times of festivities and holidays; Mrs. Akhtar remembers that he would stand with the Muslims during their Eid prayers and celebrations. Kashmir seemed be happy and well cared for under the Maharaja Hari Singh.Mrs. Akhtar’s own family was also quite strongly involved with the politics of Kashmir: her father’s older brother, her thaya, was Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, the man who would eventually become the Supreme Head, the akin to the Governor General, of Azad Jammu and Kashmir after the 1947 Partition and the struggle that would ensue in trying to allocate Kashmir. Mr. Abbas was very well known in the political circles of South Asia at the time—he was good friends with Jawahar Lal Nehru, Liaqat Ali, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the two men who would become the leaders of the new states of India and Pakistan respectively. Mr. Abbas was good friends with another political leader of Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah; however, soon, the friends and political allies founds themselves on the opposite side of a major issue that still sends ripples of political turmoil and violence in the area: Which new country should Kashmir join? While Kashmir’s leader was a Hindu, it was a Muslim majority state, and Muslim majority states that bordered the soon-to-be Pakistan area were generally joining Pakistan; conversely, Kashmir also bordered India, and it had a Hindu leader, so what would be his place in a Muslim-led country? Sheikh Abdullah was of this latter view, believing that Kashmir should go to India; whereas, Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas, Mrs. Akhtar’s thaya uncle, was of the view that Kashmir should join Pakistan. When Mr. Abbas was released from jail, despite their political differences Mr. Abdullah was the one who helped him get into Pakistan: he would be taken safely with military personnel; however, he would have to be blindfolded.Mrs. Akhtar shares the poignant and personal story of Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas’s daughter, Mrs. Akhtar’s own cousin, and her abduction. A few weeks before the Partition, Mrs. Akhtar’s family members realized that the political tensions in Kashmir were increasing daily and that it might be safer for them to leave the country. Several of Mrs. Akhtar’s family extended family members were escorted with Sikh army trucks to Pakistan—but only 12 or 13 miles from the border, everyone from all of these trucks was unloaded. All the men on the trucks from the ages of 14 to 50 are slaughtered right then and there; all the girls from the ages of 10 to 40 are abducted, including Mrs. Akhtar’s Rahat, the daughter of Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas. When his 17-year-old daughter was abducted, Mrs. Akhtar’s uncle was in jail because of his political views. When he got out of jail, Mr. Abbas did everything he could to retrieve his daughter, and although his friend Mr. Nehru was his political opponent, he would still call and apologize to Mr. Abbas about his daughter’s abduction. He also helped in the efforts to retrieve Rahat, saying that these types of things were not supposed to happen. Once Rahat’s kidnapper, a Hindu man by the name of Jagdeesh, realized that she was the daughter of a political honcho, he decided to marry here. It was eight long years before Mr. Abbas’s family was able to locate their precious Rahat, but by that time, she was living in an Indian village with her husband as the mother of three Hindu children. In fact, she had been re-cultured as a Hindu woman as well. She told her family, “I don’t want to go back. I am settled here. Jagdeesh is taking care of me and my kids. I can’t leave my kids behind.” Still, some of her family insisted on at least being allowed to visit her—and they did. She welcomed them but begged, “Please don’t touch this subject of me returning anymore. I know this culture now.”Mrs. Akhtar’s thaya, Mr. Abbas, wanted to meet Jagdeesh, but he feared that he’d be shot; Mr. Abbas, however, wanted integrate Jagdeesh into his family. Mr. Abbas said, “No, I don’t want to shoot you—I want to bring you and your family to Pakistan,” where they had migrated by the time, “so my family can be all together again.” In 1955, Pakistan offered open visas for Indians to attend a cricket match in Lahore. Mr. Abbas told Jagdeesh and his family to take advantage of this visa and come to Pakistan—ad they did. First, Rahat came, then her children, and finally Jagdeesh. She was sort of made Muslim again. Her children and her husband were given Muslim names: Jagdeesh became Khalid. None of the family, however, was happy in Pakistan. As former Hindus, they weren’t accepted as truly Muslim; even Rahat herself was no longer accepted, and she cried all the time. During the wars of 1965 ad 1971 between Pakistan and India, Jagdeesh was under constant observation; because no one trusted him and his loyalty to Pakistan, it was difficult for him to get and keep a job. Rahat and Jagdeesh had three more kids, but two of their six children went crazy because no one in their society accepted. People accepted the songs, eager to marry their daughters into good families, but no one wanted their sons to marry to daughters from a former Hindu family.In that convoy of twenty trucks protected by Sikh soldiers transporting Muslims from Indian to Pakistani territory, there were two more members of Mrs. Akhtar’s family that survived: her uncle and his wife—who was also Rahat’s mother sister. Mrs. Rahat’s aunt, who was 22 or 23 three at the time, was abducted by a person who took her to his home. As she sat there, his father walked by and he recognized him. The kidnapper’s father was a friend of her own father—they book did decorative paintings together. From that point onwards, her father’s friend treated her like his own daughter, and he made sure that she was safely taken to Lahore. Once there though, she had no way of reaching her family, but she was a smart young woman, and she announced her name and location on the radio a few times—“I am so-and-so. Where is my husband? I am in the Jesus-Mary Convent”—until a family friend was able to alert her family to come fetch her. When that refugee truck convoy was attacked, Mr. Akhtar’s uncle, ran and hid under a nearby bridge. He said he stayed there for a day or two; he would spend all night walking way from the bridge, but still wake up under it, in the same place. A former servant of Mrs. Akhtar’s family found him and took him to join the rest of his family in Pakistan. By the time they reached there, they were in terrible shape, but slowly Mrs. Akhtar’s family would reach Pakistan.Mrs. Akhtar is very attached to her extended family because they lived together for many years before (and eventually after) the Partition; her family divided its time between three main cities in Kashmir. Mrs. Akhtar’s father was an inspector of police, and he and his six brothers all lived together in the same house, maintained by her uncle who was a foreign-educated, well-off engineer. As a child, Mrs. Akhtar spent much of her time between Bhadarva, Ranbeer Singh Pura, and Hiranagar. Bhadarva is were she spent a majority of her childhood; in order to reach Bhadarva, which was 200 miles from the main capital of Jammu, her family would rent a bus to a middle city, Batowt, where they would sometimes spend the night. From Batowt, once the path got too narrow, they would take horses on a 12-hour journey. Ranbeer Singh Pura was only 12 miles from Jammu, and Mrs. Akhtar studied there in third grade. Hiranagar was a three-hour bus ride from Jammu; in order to reach it, they had to cross a large river by going around it.Mrs. Akhtar was Batowt when, at the age of nine, she heard that the Partition had occurred, and her family began their migration journey. Although she wasn’t very political conscious at that time, she remembers that it was after the announcement that people in their region started to turn against each other. The Sikhs in the region attacked their house in Jammu. Because they were a part of Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas’s family, they were under strict observation and not supposed to leave the kingdom state—but they new that they would danger if they didn’t. Mrs. Akhtar’s family took their bus to Jammu, but they didn’t go to their Uncle Abbas’s house, where they usually stayed—they went to a hotel instead. One of their Hindu servants/friends, Mouni, came to their hotel room. Panicked, he told them, “They’re watching you. On the side of your house, it says, ‘Your house will be raided, and you will be killed.’” Mouni told the Mrs. Akhtar’s family to leave the city and go to Ranbeer Singh Pura, which was only 12 miles from the Pakistani border. They stayed there for a week. Her whole packed their few belongings in only four suitcases and packed into four tongas to go to the Pakistani border, which was only two hours away.Once there, in the middle of the night, Mrs. Akhtar’s father and uncle patrolled and scouted the area to figure out how to enter Pakistan undetected. The best time to cross the border would be between 10 AM and 2 PM, when some of the officers took their lunch. During that time, the whole extended family ran the three miles to cross the border and reach the closest village on the Pakistani side of the border. Mrs. Akhtar remembers that all the women were crying, and her father and uncle were telling them to save their tears for later and just run; everyone was carrying children who were too young to ran fast enough, including herself. Mrs. Akhtar was carrying her one-year-old sister while others were carrying her five-year-old brother and her six-and-a-half-year-old brother. On the way, they drank dirty pond water to survive. Mrs. Akhtar’s father and uncle paid three months rent upfront to a landlord to get a place to stay for their family. Mrs. Akhtar recalls that banks were still accepting checks at least two months after the Partition because that was the currency that her family used to pay people and to withdraw money. To avoid arousing suspicion from their neighbors that they were political refugees on the run, they acted like they lived there. They had no food, so they boiled black stones in clay pots. A few poor land tillers came forward to offer them blankets and food. When an army truck passed through the area, full of ammunition to transport to Kashmir in the ensuing battle to follow for ownership of this northern state, Mrs. Akhtar’s father and her uncle managed to convince the truck divers, after paying them handsomely, to let their family board their empty trucks. The trucks took them to Sialkot, where Mrs. Akhtar’s family would stay for in a hotel for a few days before all 25 or so of them would move for 6-8 years to a villa in Sargoda, given to them in exchange for their lost properties and homes now in India Occupied Kashmir. (Note that Pakistanis now call their portion of Kashmir Azad (Free) Kashmir and the India part of Kashmir Occupied Kashmir—and Indians similarly call their portion of Kashmir Azad Kashmir and the Pakistani portion Occupied Kashmir.) Mrs. Akhtar’s thaya Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas would be moved to Rawalpini, the army headquarters of Pakistan, where he would be make the Supreme Head of Azad Kashmir, Pakistan.After the Partition, Mrs. Akhtar would spent much of her time living her uncle and his British, Jewish wife, Olga, because their home was closer to better school—this couple would become like a second set of parents for Mrs. Akhtar. Ogla Auntie, especially, was like a second mother to Mrs. Akhtar, who calls her a Sufi saint; she would always encourage the girls in their family to student to their heart’s content. Mrs. Akhtar’s mother and father also supported her a great deal, by providing her with resources and strong character traits. When she was a child, Mrs. Akhtar’s father would bribe her to do things by offering her short, ten page long stories to read. Mrs. Akhtar realls a Kashmiri folk tale about “Lil Dilli,” a patient, saintly woman. When she got married and when to her in-laws, her parents would ask her, “What did they give you to eat?” When she wouldn’t answer, they would lift her stomach flap and see nothing. The pious woman that Lil Dilli was, she prayed and asked God to make the stomach flab smooth and un-openable, so that her mother-in-law wouldn’t be dishonored because of how little she had been able to feed her. By the age of 16, she had read through her father’s library, and so he began teacher her to use a revolver, how to fire, and how to ride a horse, the police offer that he was. Mrs. Akhtar says that her mother taught her compassion while her father taught her confidence and courage.Perhaps as a result of Auntie Olga’s support, Mrs. Akhtar went on to complete medical school, with an emphasize in gynecology and surgery, and open her own clinic in the Korangi area of Karachi, the city she moved to after she married her husband. After she got married, Mrs. Akhtar put all the wedding got she had received as a part of her dowry and as presents into the bank, and she took a loan against it. She remembers that people cried at her doing this, but she said the gold did not matter—she needed the capital to create her clinic in this underserved part of Pakistan. Mrs. Akhtar’s clinic, named Khalida Hospital after her, soon became quite popular in the area, and she would see upwards of 200 patients a day. Although she had three doctors working with her and a staff of 37 personnel, including nurses and others, under her, her patients and community only wanted to be treated by her. Soon, people in her community were coming to her not only for medical matters, but social and economic ones as well, writing her letters from as far as Dubai to seek her advice and opinion on personal matters. In the beginning, before she was able to afford a car, she commuted 2.5 hours daily by public bus to reach her clinic. She was the first lady doctor in a ten-mile radius in that region. Although she worked there for 11 years, she had to stop because she couldn’t afford to pay political parties, like the MQM, the bribes they demanded to keep from harassing her clinic. When she finally had to give up her practice, she donated her clinic to Al-Shifa, a hospital and organization dedicated to handicapped children in Karachi.These days, Mrs. Akhtar lives with her daughter in the U.S. Here, she spent her time volunteering at Kaiser Permanente and John Muir Hospitals. She also enjoys her time painting, writing poetry, making pottery, reading, drawing/sketching, playing piano, among other activities—she says she’s finally able to do all those things that she wanted to do when she was ten and couldn’t because the Partition, that she personally believes never should have happened, made her grow up too fast. “United,” Mrs. Akhtar says, quoting the first President of India, “South Asia could have been the largest democracy. The people there have lived together for at least 1000 years, and religion shouldn’t be the basis for nationhood because it allows for the possibility of extremism to creep in.” Even now, Mrs. Akhtar’s family cannot return to India Occupied Kashmir, although they can visit India. Mrs. Akhtar truly hopes she is allowed to return to her homeland and visit it one day. She shares a message for future generations in memory of her own parents: “Live your life every day with courage, confidence, and compassion. They are the three things that have helped me all my life. Keep your mind open, and never fear what tomorrow brings—refine yourself and all of humanity.”

Mr. Shafi Refai was born on May 27th, 1942 in Surat, Gujarat, India. His ancestors hail from the region of Iraq. In the 18th century, the migrated towards the South Asian Subcontinent, and since then, his family has always been in the Gujarat region—until some of them more recently migrated to the United States. Mr. Refai shares that his ancestors may have migrated to the Subcontinent because under the Mughal Empire, the region was a melting pot for different types of people. Once Mr. Refai’s family migrated to India, they established the Refai Sufi Order based on tasawwuf, or spirituality rather than mere physical rituals and practice. His family can trace 40 generations of their forefathers directly back to the Prophet Muhammad; they keep this history of the names of their links to the Prophet within their family and they carry it within their historical family name: Syed. Mr. Refai’s family received the name from their famous 11th century Sufi forefather: Ahmed Kabir Rifai. Ahmed ar-Rifai was a humble man, despite his wealth, and he was known for founding the Refai Sufi Order in present-day Iraq.Mr. Refai’s paternal grandfather’s untimely death is what made his own childhood more than of a prince than of a Sufi scholar. Mr. Refai’s grandfather, the household patriarch, was a Sufi leader and scholar. In fact, Mr. Refai’s home was a Sufi khanqa, a school of sorts for lay people; however, Mr. Refai’s grandfather passed away when his son, Mr. Refai’s father, was only five years old. After the death of his father, Mr. Refai’s father was raised by his grandmother. Mr. Refai’s great-grandmother was the daughter of the navaab, the Muslim king, of Surat, Gujarat. Because of his father’s upbringing in a navaab house, Mr. Refai’s own childhood was spent playing with Surat’s royalty—his cousins and second cousins—when the navaab at the time would visit their family. Mr. Refai’s maternal grandfather also had links to royalty: he was the secretary of the maharaja, the Hindu king, of Baroda (present-day Vadoda). His mother’s side of the family were Syeds and mirs. Mr. Refai shares that when the maharaja of Baroda wanted to marry the maharaja of Maysur’s daughter, he had Mr. Refai’s maternal grandfather send the proposal to the family.Mr. Refai grew up in a joint family with his parents and his three siblings as well as his uncles and aunties. The men generally worked outside the home while the ladies took care of the housekeeping. Mr. Refai is the oldest son in his family; he has an older sister, and two younger brothers and a younger sister. Because of their shared home, Mr. Refai grew up in a warm, close-knit family environment. He shares that even though they were from Gujarat, Mr. Refai’s family was Urdu speaking at home. The children learned several languages at school: Urdu, their native language; Gujurat, the state language; Hindi, the national language; English, the global/colonial language; and their choice of Persian or Sanskrit, traditional/historical languages. Mr. Refai shared that he and his siblings took Persian because when their family migrated from Iraq, they transitioned from Arabic to Persian before eventually speaking Urdu. He discovered this while examining the books that his family kept with them throughout the years, although he confesses that many of them are now lost, disintegrated due to bookworms, or indecipherable because no one in his family speaks that level of Arabic. As a young man, Mr. Refai especially enjoyed the Urdu poetry of Iqbal and Ghalib.As a child, Mr. Refai would enjoy many activities and holidays with his friends, family, and family friends. As a young man, for example, he particularly enjoyed played cricket outside their home. He would occasionally visit a few mosques with his family for daily prayers and weekly Friday prayers. Sometimes, his family would visit Doomas, a seaside city eight miles from their home where they would enjoy the water and play in the side. Eid was Mr. Refai’s favorite holiday. On this far, Mr. Refai’s family would make biryani, goat curry, tikka, and seekh. Family and friends would visit their home to share in the food and festivities. The children received small cash presents. Another holiday Mr. Refai enjoyed celebrating as a child in India, although he shares that he hasn’t celebrated it since arriving to the U.S. in ’71, is Diwali. On this celebrative day marking the Hindu new year, firecrackers were lit, and people enjoyed themselves. Mr. Refai would visit his grandfather’s Hindu friends with him on Diwali; they would be given firecrackers to light and sweets to consume. Surat was actually known for its sweets like ghaani and barfi. Mr. Refai also loved the kite-flying holiday of Utraaon on January 14th, when the city would be filled with young and old flying kites. Movies though, Mr. Refai explains, were the main source of entertainment for his family and young people in those days, and his family loved going to the cinema.Mr. Refai’s family home was rather large. Besides the khanqa, the lay people’s Sufi school, Mr. Refai’s family’s grounds also included a family cemetery. Near their home was the River Tapti, although the received water from a pipe based water supply system. Sometimes, they had to collect water in an underwater tank for emergency purposes, just in case the pipes were blocked or clogged. Mr. Refai’s family home itself had huge courtyards; the home really consisted of four home together, so that each of Mr. Refai’s paternal grandfather’s sons had their own home. For transportation, Mr. Refai’s family either used the French car that his father bought or the Buick that his grandfather would later purchase. Other times, they used their horse and tonga to get places. At one time, all the people who lived in the home and at the khanqa kept up the tradition of preserving the Refai Sufi Order and school in India; however, Mr. Refai explains, as time when on, people lost touch with being fulltime Sufis. More and more people left home to work and even went abroad, like him. These days, Mr. Refai cherishes the rituals of rational thought more than religious dogma.In those days, Surat was a small town of only 250,000, but these days Mr. Refai says, the city has changed and grown to a bustling city of five million. Before the Partition, Mr. Refai’s grandfather had been interested in politics, so he had gone over to a small town near by, Randair, where he served as their mayor, but these days, Randair has been incorporated into the larger Surat. Most people in Surat followed the Gregorian calendar, but at home, people might also follow their own religious or ethnic calendar, much in the way that Mr. Refai’s family followed the Hijri Islamic calendar in their homes. They used this calendar to mark and celebrate people’s birthdates. For their birthdays, Mr. Refai’s family would get people cake, flowers, money, and gifts. Surat was a modern enough town with electricity and movie houses. Seller would go through the streets and sells fruits, vegetables, chocolates, and biscuits. The majority Hindu town had good interfaith relations before and after the Partition. For example, the school that Mr. Refai attended with Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim boys began as a madrasa school in a mosque until it eventually became its own entity and transformed into a government sponsored school.In Mr. Refai’s childhood home, the food that didn’t come from the markets and mundis came from his grandfather’s farms. Mr. Refai’s grandfather owned quite a great deal of land and several properties. He would lease them out to farmers and others, but he also kept some farmland for himself. He particularly enjoyed growing mangos, although he also grew javaar, a grain. Mr. Refai’s family no longer owns these lands though because his grandfather has long since sold them and given up the farms with the grains and fruit that would be directly delivered to their home. In fact, these fresh and homemade traditional foods are what Mr. Refai revealed that he missed most when he first came to the United States; although these days, they are easily accessible.The Partition was something that Mr. Refai and his family barely noticed. As a child of five, the only strong memory or impression he has from during those years is that his grandfather and his father would sit with friends close to the radio and would listen to news about the Partition and the split that would soon take place in the South Asian Subcontinent. Mr. Refai isn’t aware of any political movements, social upheaval, or chaos in his area of the Gujarat at that time. He does remember that Ghandhi assassination came as a bit of a shock to everyone at his school.Much has changed since the Partition for Surat and for Mr. Refai as well. Surat no longer has a navaab. All of the children in his immediate and extended family went abroad to the U.K. and the U.S. to study, and so they no longer maintain the old kingdom. As he grew older, Mr. Refai knew that he wanted to go to a country that was more based in rationalism and thought than religion and tradition. After studying civil engineering in India, Mr. Refai applied for an American visa and waited. During this time, he married and moved to Dubai for work, but soon, his visa was accepted, and he left his job in Dubai for San Francisco, where his wife soon joined him as well.These days, Mr. Refai works as a civil engineer for the City of Oakland, California; when he’s not working, he enjoys reading books in history, politics, and religion—or texts that intersect these three areas. He also enjoys attending events sponsored by the Urdu Academy in the Bay Area, where they hold mushairas, or poetry events focusing on a single poet, their life, and their poetry. He still enjoys the poets from his youth: Ghalib, Iqbal, and Mir.Mr. Refai’s philosophy, in the words of one he admires, is that “no single people have a monopoly on truth—it is spread everywhere.” Although, Mr. Refai reflects, the goal of the Partition for some was to unite the Muslims into one country, they are now instead divided amongst three countries in the Subcontinent: Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Mr. Refai believes that Jinnah himself did not expect that those in power would agree to divide India into two countries; as Mr. Refai sees it, Jinnah simply approached Parliament at the time to ask for rights for Muslims in the new nation that was to be rather than to create a separate nation. Mr. Refai leaves future generations with the following: “We should try to rationalize the world and follow it—not towards our own self-interested but for the interest of all of humanity. […] Most problems in the world today are not God-made, but man-made, and them come from our own selfishness.”

Zeba Rizvi was born in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh in 1940. Her family traces its roots to Persia, from where most of her forefathers made their way to Badaun and settled. Her grandparents resided in Badaun until they migrated to Pakistan at the time of the Partition, although her own immediate family did not. She will never forget the words of her father, a government officer: "I have made my final decision, we are staying."Mrs. Rizvi, born Zeba Roshan Raza, had a rather large family with seven siblings. As a child, Mrs. Rizvi recalls that her family had an unusual dynamic. She remembers that the children were encouraged to read and learn about the world, but they weren't allowed to go outside and watch the street entertainment. They could leave the house, but only with a caretaker. Mrs. Rizvi particularly loved her summer holidays, fun and carefree. One of her favorite activities was attending the exhibitions in which sellers from different places would come and showcase their goods. Oftentimes, circuses accompanied these sellers at exhibitions and the whole affair could last up to a month. Perhaps because of their strict household environment, Mrs. Rizvi and her siblings grew up reading quite a bit. When she was a student, Mrs. Rizvi became involved with debating at her school from the sixth grade and into her university years. She excelled and won multiple debating trophies. She recalls that trophies stayed at the school and were put on display there while the medals for participants were taken home. Because of her winning track, her trophies always stayed with her schools. Her excellent reading and debating skills led Mrs. Rizvi to later major in Urdu and begin writing short stories in college.As a child, Mrs. Rizvi's family included her father, her mother, her siblings, and her amma. Amma was Mrs. Rizvi's family's domestic helper who took care of the children and the household; however, at that time, it was common to not address servants by their names, so instead her family called the woman "mamma," or mother. When she was small, Mrs. Rizvi understood her life as having a "Mummy" and an "Amma." Her Mummy would teach her important life lessons, such as to live within one's means. Mrs. Rizvi's amma took care of her on a daily basis and told her stories from various traditions. The Partition was something that was distant from the minds of Mrs. Rizvi and her siblings. She attributes this to the fact that her family moved out of the Badaun, where her extended family and other Muslim families lived, very early on because of her father's job. As a government official, he had to travel quite a bit for work, and he always took his family with him. Their family always lived in large, beautiful compounds in the Civil Lines, where government officials were housed. Their homes had spacious central courtyards where the family would sleep in the open in the summers, reserving the surrounding rooms for the cold winter months. Their rather large compound would include the surrounding wilderness, sometimes even with the Ganga on one side as when they lived in Ghazipur. In the Civil Lines, Mrs. Rizvi reveals, they were not Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, or Christians, they were considered as government families. She says that there were no religions in friendship, religion was just a reminder to love others.After Partition, Mrs. Rizvi married Mr. Yusuf Zaki Rizvi. The marriage was an arranged one and he grew to be her lifelong companion. They wed in Lucknow, lived in Raipur for a little while, and moved to Mumbai where they raised their children. During her life, Mrs. Rizvi has enjoyed being a homemaker, a wife, mother to three, and a grandmother to six. She strives to promote friendship and understanding between all people in her daily life. Mrs. Rizvi also volunteered for various NGOs and social organizations. She has guest starred on several All India Radio shows focused on women. These days, Mrs. Rizvi lives with her daughter's family in the United States where she also continues to write short stories inspired by current world events and joyous occasions in her life that she shares with her friends.